This information is based on the previous version
of the AP US History Test – before 2015
Themes in AP U.S. History
The Test Development Committee of the College Board has encouraged the close examination of twelve themes in U.S. History. These themes will be incorporated into each unit of study throughout the course of the year. Students should familiarize themselves with each of these themes and consider them both within and between units. Students should attempt to ascertain the “change over time” that each of the themes undergoes in the progression of U.S. History, but they should also be aware of the interactions of these themes on each other both within and between units of study. The suggested themes follow:
American Diversity
The diversity of the American people and the relationships among different groups. The roles of race, class, ethnicity, and gender in the history of the United States.
American Identity
Views of the American national character and ideas about American exceptionalism. Recognizing regional differences within the context of what it means to be an American.
Culture
Diverse individual and collective expressions through literature, art, philosophy, music, theater, and film throughout U.S. history. Popular culture and the dimensions of cultural conflict within American society.
Demographic Changes
Changes in birth, marriage, and death rates; life expectancy and family patterns; population size and density. The economic, social, and political effects of immigration internal migration, and migration networks.
Economic Transformations
Changes in trade, commerce, and technology across time. The effects of capitalist development, labor and unions, and consumerism.
Environment
Ideas about the consumption and conservation of natural resources. The impact of population growth, industrialization, pollution, and urban and suburban expansion.
Globalization
Engagement with the rest of the world from the fifteenth century to the present: colonialism, mercantilism, global hegemony, development of markets, imperialism, cultural exchange.
Politics and Citizenship
Colonial and revolutionary legacies, American political traditions, growth of democracy, and the development of the modern state. Defining citizenship; struggles for civil rights.
Reform
Diverse movements focusing on a broad range of issues, including anti-slavery, education, labor, temperance, women’s rights, civil rights, gay rights, was public health, and government.
Religion
The variety of religious beliefs and practices in America from prehistory to the twenty-first century; influence of religion on politics, economics, and society.
Slavery and Its Legacies in North American
Systems of slave labor and other forms of unfree labor (e.g., indentured servitude, contract labor) in Native American societies, the Atlantic World, and the American South and West. The economics of slavery and its racial dimensions. Patterns of resistance and the long-term economic, political, and social effects of slavery.
War and Diplomacy
Armed conflict from the pre-colonial period to the twenty-first century; impact of war on American foreign policy and on politics, economy, and society.
The Structure of the AP U.S. History Exam
Multiple choice:
• 80 multiple choice questions
• 55 minutes
• 50% of the total exam
Five minute break between multiple choice and free response section
Free response section:
• 15 minute mandatory reading period
Document based question (DBQ)
• 45 minute suggested writing time
• 22.5% of total exam grade
Standard essay questions:
• Answer one question each from two groups of two questions
• 35 minute suggested writing time for each essay
• Each essay 13.75% of the total exam grade
• Generally, the first group of questions will be pre-1865
• Generally, the second group of questions will be post-1865
Neither the DBQ or any of the four essay questions will deal exclusively with the post-1980 period.
TERMS FROM MULTIPLE CHOICE EXAMS
1607-1763
indentured servants proprietary, royal, charter colonies Pilgrims/Separatists
Trade and Navigation Acts Peter Zenger trial House of Burgesses
Mayflower Compact King Philip's War Anne Hutchinson
Roger Williams George Whitefield William Bradford
Great Puritan Migration Great Awakening French and Indian War
New England Confederation Thomas Hobbes John Locke
Freedom of consciences mercantilism Iroquios Confederacy
Jonathan Edwards Bacon's Rebellion headright system
Halfway Covenant Harvard College Salutary neglect
Salem Witch trials Middle Passage Albany Plan
city on a hill Phyllis Wheatly James Oglethorpe
William Penn Puritans
1763-1775
Proclamation of 1763 Boston Tea Party Battle of Saratoga
Thomas Paine/Common Sense/ Coercive/Intolerable Acts no taxation without representation
Crisis Papers Loyalists/Tories Stamp Act
Stamp Act Congress Sons of Liberty non-importation agreements
Olive Branch Petition First/Second Continental Congress virtual representation
Pontiac's Rebellion Boston Massacre Gaspee Affair
Quartering Act Paxton Boys Sugar Act 1764
Townshend Acts Tea Act
1775-1825
Monroe Doctrine corrupt bargain Marbury v Madison
Embargo Act 1807 loose/strict constructionism Bank of the United States
Louisiana Purchase Lewis and Clark yeomen farmers
Tecumseh Gibbons v Ogden Virginia-Kentucky Resolutions
Jay Treaty Treaty of Ghent Shay's Rebellion
Whiskey Rebellion Land Ordinance of 1785 Northwest Ordinance
Gabriel Prosser's Rebellion Critical period Lowell/Walthan System/Lowell girls
Annapolis Convention XYZ Affair Erie Canal
Orders in Council War Hawks impressment
Hartford Convention cotton gin/Eli Whitney Declaration of Independence
American Colonization Society Articles of Confederation Missouri Compromise
republicanism/democracy Three-fifths Compromise Adams-Onis Treaty
interchangeable parts Deism American System
Henry Clay Revolution of 1800 Bill of rights
Washington's Farewell Address full funding/assumption Judicial Review
Connecticut (Great) Compromise Virginia/New Jersey Plans Era of Good Feelings
Barbary Pirates Samuel Slater Citizen Genet
undeclared naval war Federalist/First American Party System Alien and Sedition Acts
Treaty of Alliance 1778 Benjamin Banneker Pinckney Treaty
Treaty of Paris 1783 Haitian Rebellion National Republicans
Republican Motherhood
1825-1865
Seneca Falls Convention Trail of Tears Compromise of 1850
Dorothea Dix Emancipation Proclamation nullification
John C. Calhoun Hinton Helper/Impending Crisis William Lloyd Garrison/Liberator
Oregon Territory Dred Scott v Sandford spoils system/rotation in office
Stephen Douglas Bank war popular sovereignty
Wilmot Proviso Mexican Cession Gadsden Purchase
John Deere Cyrus McCormick American Anti-slavery Society
Maine Laws Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo Irish immigration
Mexican American War John Slidell Trent Affair
abolitionists free soilers Know Nothing/American Party
bleeding Kansas Second Great Awakening Mormons
Horace Mann Worcester v Georgia Prigg v Pennsylvania
Commonwealth v Hunt Charles River Bridge case Kansas-Nebraska Act
Transcendentalism cult of domesticity/true womanhood Manifest Destiny
Webster-Ashburton Treaty Clayton-Bulwer Treaty Republican party/3rd Am. Party
Sys.
Whigs/2nd American Party Sys. gag rule Lincoln-Douglas debates
Freeport Doctrine DeTocqueville/Democracy in America Tariff of Abominations
James K. Polk William Seward Ostend Manifesto
Apologist's view of slavery Fugitive Slave Law antebellum
Force Act removal of deposits Battle of Antietam
Homestead Act Harriet Beecher Stowe Uncle Tom's Cabin
Lucretia Mott Brigham Young Neal Dow
Independent Treasury Specie Circular Sumner-Brooks Affair
Nashville Convention Crittenden Compromise Underground Railroad
Morrill Land Grant Act Lecompton Constitution National Banking Act
compact theory perpetual union nature of the union
Frederick Douglass
1865-1900
new immigrants old immigrants radical reconstruction
black codes 13th, 14th, 15th amendments Plessy v Ferguson
Populist (People's) Party bread and butter unionism Joseph Pulitzer
Molly McGuires Spanish-American War Knights of Labor
American Federation of Labor National Labor Union crop lien system
sharecropping Helen Hunt Jackson A Century of Dishonor
Booker T. Washington Social Gospel Gospel of Wealth
Dawes Act jingoism yellow journalism
Sherman Anti-trust Act Alfred Thayer Mahan social Darwinism
settlement house movement horizontal integration vertical integration
William Jennings Bryan Freedmen's Bureau cult of domesticity
Battle of Little Bighorn Sioux Wars Boxer Rebellion
Turner (Frontier) Thesis Gilded Age Samuel Gompers
pragmatism (William James) Haymarket Incident Civil Rights Act of 1866
Tenure of Office Act scalawags Farmer's Alliances
William Randolph Hearst Compromise of 1877 Jim Crow Laws
Granger Laws Atlanta Compromise redemption (redeemers)
Henry George (Progress and Poverty)
John Dewey "waving the bloody shirt"
Bland-Allison Act Thomas Nast Seward's Folly
Edwin Stanton Sherman Silver Purchase Act Edward Bellamy (Looking
Backward)
the Grange Pendleton (Civil Service) Act Boss Tweed
Young Men's Christian Association Salvation Army Chataugua movement
open range Munn v Illinois "forty acres and a mule"
Pullman Strike Interstate Commerce Act Coxey's Army
Frederick Olmstead Louis Sullivan Chinese Exclusion Act
injunction long drives Andrew Carnegie
"Crime of '73" John Peter Altgeld Crédit Moblier Scandal
Horatio Alger J.P. Morgan Teller Amendment
Platt amendment Chief Joseph Wounded Knee
John D. Rockefeller Cross of Gold Speech Anti-Saloon League
Pullman Strike Ida Wells Jacob Riis (How The Other Half
Women’s Christian Temperance Union Lives)
1900-1918
Treaty of Versailles Panama Canal Hay-Buneau-Varilla Treaty
League of Nations Federal Trade Commission Woodrow Wilson
Committee on Public Information Creel Committee Progressive movement
muckrakers International Workers of the World Wobblies
Russo-Japanese War Federal Reserve System Article X
Henry Cabot Lodge irreconcilables reservationists
Open Door Policy Dollar Diplomacy spheres of influence
Fourteen Points W.E.B. DuBois (Niagara movement) Ballinger-Pinchot Affair
16th, 17th amendments Theodore Roosevelt Big Stick Policy
Upton Sinclair (The Jungle) Gentlemen's Agreement Roosevelt Corollary
Volstead Act "Birth of a Nation"/D.W. Griffith Keating-Owen Child Labor Act
Mann-Elkin Act "good and bad" trusts Food Administration
Sussex/Arabic Pledges Emilio Aguinaldo Insular Cases
Charles and Mary Beard "Black Jack" John Pershing New Nationalism
Anthracite Coal Strike Jacob Riis Pure Food and Drug Act
Zimmerman Note (Telegram) Lusitania Northern Securities Case
Eugene V. Debs Muller v Oregon Lochner v New York
Samuel "Golden Rule" Jones triple wall of privilege Clayton Anti-trust Act
Underwood-Simmons Tariff insurgent's revolt New Freedom
Bull Moose Party Robert LaFollette Great White Fleet
1918-1941
Harlem Renaissance Langston Hughes Washington Naval Conference
National Origins Act quota system Ku Klux Klan
cultural isolation NAACP Scottsboro boys
18th, 19th, 20th, 21st amendments Bonus March Scopes trial
Andrew Mellon Schenck v U.S. Schechter v U.S. (sick chicken case)
Albert Fall Sacco and Vanzetti Herbert Hoover
John L. Lewis TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority) dole
Hoovervilles Henry Ford Marcus Garvey
"Back to Africa movement" Universal Negro Improvement Assc. Charles Lindbergh
"Spirit of St. Louis" America First Committee Elijah Mohammad (Black Muslims)
Palmer Raids Kellogg-Briand Pact Stimson Doctrine
"lost generation" hundred days brain trust
Keynesian economics New Deal Franklin Roosevelt
Warren G. Harding Calvin Coolidge Sinclair Lewis
F. Scott Fitzgerald Social Security Act Wagner Act
National Labor Relations Act Fair Labor Standards Act sit-down strike
National Industrial Recovery Act Federal Deposit Insurance Corp (FDIC) Frank Lloyd Wright
Huey Long (Kingfish) "share the wealth" Teapot Dome/Elk Hills Scandals
Georgia O'Keeffe Thomas Hart Benton Edward Hopper
John Steinbeck (Grapes of Wrath) H.L. Menken Ernest Hemingway
Lend-Lease Act normalcy destroyer deal
court packing scheme cash and carry bank holiday
Indian Reorganization Act Congress of Industrial Organization National Recovery Administration
Works Progress Administration (WPA) Securities and Exchange
flappers Francis Townsend Commission
Neutrality acts phony war Margaret Sanger
Agricultural Adjustment Adm. (AAA) Prohibition
Reconstruction Finance Corporation
1941-1960
Japanese interment Korematsu v U.S. Federal Highway Act
Greensboro sit-ins Montgomery bus boycott Employment Act of 1946
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg McCarthyism Brown v Board of Education
U-2 incident Harry Truman Fair Deal
Marshall Plan Truman Doctrine containment
Casablanca Conference Teheran Conference Yalta Conference
Dumbarton Oaks Conference San Francisco Conference United Nations
Alger Hiss NSC 68 Berlin Airlift
"long hot summers: Youngstown Sheet and Tube v Sawyer George Kennan
Henry Wallace Douglas MacArthur Korean War
baby boomers Sputnik NATO
Jack Kerouac (On the Road) beat generation Taft-Hartley Act
Little Rock school crisis Eisenhower Doctrine National Defense Education Act
GI Bill of Rights Servicemen's Readjustment Act Ralph Bunche
Jackie Robinson New Frontier dynamic conservatism
David Riesman Dixiecrats Civil Rights Commission
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
1960 to present
Miranda v Arizona Cuban Missile Crisis John F. Kennedy
Huey Newton (Black Panthers) Stokely Carmichael (Black Power) Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
Jimmy Carter Vietnamization (Guam/Nixon Doctrine) Ronald Reagan
Washington outsiders George Wallace Martin Luther King
Bay of Pigs Roe v Wade Gideon v Wainwright
Economic Opportunity Act War on Poverty Great Society
Malcolm X Warren Commission Lee Harvey Oswald
SALT I Treaty hippies Camp David Accords
Mayaguez incident Bakke v Board of Regents affirmative action
Gerald Ford Michael Harrington (The Other America) supply-side economics
Reaganomics stagflation Civil rights Act 1964
Voting rights Act 1965 Barry Goldwater Lyndon Johnson
Rachel Carson (Silent Spring) Ralph Nader (Unsafe at any Speed) Kent State
War Powers Act Equal Rights Amendment Betty Friedan (The Feminine
Southern Christian Leadership Conference Mystique)
OPEC Helsinki Accords Peace Corps
Tet Offensive SNCC Black Panthers
Making Generalizations: Construct a focused topic statement for each numbered group which expresses a main
idea for which all of the items could serve as supporting information.
1. 2.
Sons of Liberty Fletcher v Peck
Non-importation agreements Whiskey Rebellion
Boston Tea Party Loose constructionism
Committees of Correspondence Assumption
Stamp Act Congress War of 1812
Gaspee Affair McCulloch v Maryland
Boston Massacre Pinckney Treaty
3. 4.
Bank War Transcendentalism
Nullification of the Tariff of 1832 Abolitionist movement
Non-enforcement of Worcester v Georgia Utopian communitarianism
Spoils System Second Great Awakening
Maysville Road veto Manifest Destiny
Mandate from the people Seneca Falls Convention
Rotation in office Movement for public education
5. 6.
Wilmot Proviso The Liberator
Kansas-Nebraska Act Harper’s Ferry raid
Freeport Doctrine Bleeding Kansas
Compromise of 1850 The Gag Rule
Ostend Manifesto Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Filibustering expeditions Fugitive Slave Law
Lecompton Constitution Dred Scott v Sandford
7. 8.
Shay's Rebellion separation of powers
Albany Plan egalitarianism
Regulator Movement disestablishment
Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions abolitionism
Paxton Boys Bills of Rights
Whiskey Rebellion separation of church and state
Burr's Conspiracy enfranchisement
9. 10.
National Origins Act NSC - 68
Scopes Trial Domino Theory
Sacco and Vanzetti Berlin Crisis
Babbit McCarthyism
H.L. Mecken Truman Doctrine
Harlem Renaissance Marshall Plan
Flappers Korean War
11. 12.